Pro Tools Recording Vocals Tips

There’s a lot of different ways to approach recording vocals, what we’ll focus on here is workflow and set up in Pro Tools. These are tips for the audio engineer and producer to help speed up the process of recording vocals in Pro Tools and set things up so you’re in a good position to start comp’ing.

The goal is to try and make your vocal recording session seamless and run smoothly so that the singer can focus on their job without even being aware that you’re doing yours.

If there’s one thing I’ve learned while in session it’s mainly that the more I’ve been able to be hyper-aware of all the tracks, settings, and most importantly, the people, then the better the session will run.

A smooth-running session makes everyone more comfortable and they always perform better. The best session is when musicians aren’t aware of the thousands of things you’re doing as an audio engineer.

It’s not just about setting up some mics and hitting record. You have to shape your session so that the artist feels as comfortable as possible and therefore gives a great performance and doesn’t just stand in front of the mic and “phone it in”.

When tracking vocals in Pro Tools:

It’s all about your recording tracks (audio tracks) and your input auxes (add your outboard chain if you have a lot of outboard gear). If I’m stuck in a room where I don’t have a lot of great outboard tube pres and compressors to get the sound I want before hitting the converters, then I always put the microphone into an Aux track first so it can be processed just a little before bussing to an audio track to record.

As you probably already know, you can’t actually record audio on an aux track. However, if you go straight to an audio track, then you don’t record with the plug-ins on that track, either. Note: don’t record any effects: reverbs, chorus, flanger, etc., but it’s generally OK to record a LITTLE compression, gating, and EQ (dynamic and frequency processing, not time-based).

By inputting the microphone on the aux, you can set up your compressor, EQs, etc. on that track to get some control over your sound and shape it just enough to where you know it’s going to sound good once you start recording. You must be gentle, however, don’t process it like crazy, just get a good sound so that you have options when you’re mixing.

How to record in Pro Tools through an Aux / Bus track:

1. Set up one Aux track for your input signal.
2. Make its input the microphone input on your A/D converter (audio interface)
3. Make the OUTPUT of the Aux track a bus (anything not used, say Bus 1 for example)
4. Create a bunch of Audio tracks
5. Make the input of the first audio track Bus 1.
6. Solo Isolate the Aux track (command + click on solo). This lets you solo the audio track without cutting the aux off so that you can still get the input from the aux track.
7. As you record, just drag each take to open audio tracks (muted, or used as stacks). I tend to like that more than playlists. Recording use a lot of tracks; save playlists for doing remixes, edits, etc.

So now you’re ready to start recording (we’re skipping headphone set up and all that for now). Arm one track, and you’ll see signal, you can then use the aux fader to adjust the input into that audio track (though I don’t recommend it; keep it at unity if at all possible, and keep an eye on both clip indicators)

Record.

Then for your next take (in this case we’re avoiding punches, we just want the singer to run through it a few times and record them – can always comp them later), simply drag what you just recorded to another audio track (that’s muted or really low used as a stack) and start recording again. There’s no adjusting inputs, no patches to change, just a region move you’re ready to roll again. It’s amazingly fast and keeps the session running without any down time.

Note: as you get some extra tracks, try using the other takes as stacks in the vocalist’s headphones. Just un-mute them, turn them down and pan them out a little bit. It will give a much larger sound and might help motivate the vocalist’s performance by making it feel like their more “in” the song.